What a stinker!!!

Well, the title sums up todays race....

Try to keep this as short as possible, but this was not good!!

Lessons learnt:

1. Do not eat chilli and garlic prawns the night before a race

2. Do not spend the whole of the day before, painting the skirting boards

3. Check your brakes dont stick to you rear wheel...

Pre race:

Got up at 5ish, bit of muesli and then drove to the start in plenty of time. The three 'pit stops' were an ominous sign of things to come, little did I know...

Red bull downed, and ready to go.

Swim:

Target was 6:45 - actual 6:38. Valuable lesson here, dont need to practice swimming as my times don't getting any quicker with it... I was in the first wave, the cycleworld and soton tri club one and I was in the lane with Dave Savage. Set off too hard as usual and got past Dave in two laps then settled down into my normal pace and got out feeling OK.

T1:

Pretty pleased here as this was probably one of my quickest transitions ever - at least something went right today ;o)

Bike:

This is where it all went wrong... Set off going quite well and was sat behind one of the cycleworld guys (Anthony I think? He came 6th overall, so good for him...) for a little while and was closing in on him slowly but then after around two miles I came to the first little climb and it was like someone was sitting on my back!! I felt fine and looked down at the bike quickly and everything seemed OK so carried on as I thought I was going through a bad patch. People were flying by and no disrepect to any other competitors, this is my strong point and I very rarely get overtaken - OK, I was on my road bike but even so, something wasn't right...

It wasn't until 6 and a half miles that I eventually stopped to check the bike and the rear brake had clamped onto the wheel and I had been cycling with this since the start!!! I tried taking my wheel out and re-aligning and I was getting in a total mess... Thought I fixed it and off I set.

Dave overtook me in the meanwhile and was not far up the road and he also had his fair share of mechanicals what with his chain coming off twice!! Things still weren't right... The brake was still rubbing and tried to centre the brake on the fly but to no avail, so I just tried to power through it. To be honest, I'd sort of given up on my top ten finish and now I just wanted to put in a good run to redeem something in this race...

Bike time - don't know and didn't care...

T2:

This again was pretty good...

Run:

Got the shoes on and sprinted off - must have been at around 5.15 pace - this was more suited to a 400m race rather than a 5k!!

Tried to settle down and reel in the first guy I spotted who was another cycleworld guy and he was moving pretty well but my stomach wasn't having any of it! I needed a crap, and I had to go but should I go now or try and wait till the end??

I got up the first and only real hill in the run and I was only about 20 metres away from the next guy but it was no good, I had to go....

Was running around a grassy layby looking for a place to go - sorry if anybody saw me but I just had to go!! Must have lost around a minute and half here easy looking for a good place to squat!!!

Finished what I had to do and just tried to go as hard as I could to the finish. Got a time of 20.xx with an average of 6:49's and that was including the 'pit stop'...

Finish time: 1:09:xx

Position 55th!!! This is a personal worst...

Was pretty annoyed with myself for schoolboy errors that cost me dear but ho hum, you live and learn...

Next race, 'One last Tri' and things will be different there, oh yes, they will be different ;o)